In Which Ludo is the Soundtrack
by An Oversized T-Shirt
Summary: Enter the writer: on a quest to write a fic to every Ludo song they can get their hands on, and to have them all pertain to HiNaBN in some way or another. Despite appearances, it is dubious that most, if any, of the stories will tie into one and other.
1. The Horror of Our Love

_Reason? What? No, sorry, there is none of that here._

_This started out as an the iPod shuffle challenge. For those of you who are unaware, that's when you choose a subject, character, or fandom to write for, then grab your iPod, set it to shuffle, and write to the first ten songs that pop up, in the time during which they play. I put a small twist on the challenge for myself: I was only going to use Ludo songs (hahaarentIsoclever). And, surprisingly, that worked out well. A little too well, actually; I was soon staring down two thousand plus words for just three songs. Needless to say, those words were not written in the span of the songs they were supposed to represent._

_Now, that would be the point where most sane people would scrap the challenge, or just post the stories as their own, independent works and call it a day. I, however, am not most sane people (or even sane, really). I am, rather, an individual who is easily swept up in the exciting prospect of and just seems to love starting huge projects (that almost never get finished). That said, it's rather easily to see how my debating on if I should just toss the short (read: poorly written) bits I had created led to me saying to myself: "HAHAYEAHIT'SA **GREAT IDEA** TOWRITEALOTOFTHSEMOREMORE **MORE**". And yes, on paper, that sounds insane. However, you weren't there. You don't know what it was like (STOPJUDGINGME), and I'm damn persuasive when I scream ideas in my head at a speed that rivals a squirrel on crack._  
><strong><em>Damn. Persuasive.<em>**

_Mild self deprecation aside, I decided that, rather than do something sane with the stories I had, that I would make a collection of stories for HiNaBN which included a piece written to every single Ludo song I could get my hands on (which about forty-five, if you're wondering (but that's including a few songs that span less than two minutes))._

_Is this a good idea? No, not really. Is it going to be interesting? Probably. Is it going to be entertaining? It might be. Is it going to advance my understanding of the characters in the comic? I sincerely hope so. But, regardless of how this turns out, it's going to turn out._

_So, keeping in mind that I'm not expecting anything phenomenal to come of this, and that some of these fics might not make sense without the song (I suggest pulling them up on YouTube if that does indeed wind up being the case), let's get this Hindenburg flying, shall we?_

__A big "thank you" to MissDomaYuset, who checked this over for me._  
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><p><em><strong>The Horror of Our Love<strong>_

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><p>It wasn't often that the zombie displayed any kind of concern (he had rather taken to a quiet and regular stoicism over the previous decade he'd endured at both the hands of of rigor mortis and decay), but this moment seemed to be one that was separate from the norm: during its span, orange eyes were gazing out of one of the few impossibly small windows the apartment their host lived (ah, that... was decidedly <em>not <em>a word that should have been applied to the zombie or any zombie, really) with marked worry.

Occasionally, Andrew mused on what kind of life he might have had before he died. It wasn't often that he did so; he only took to such imaginings when he had absolutely nothing else to do. And, "having absolutely nothing else to do", with the partner he currently found himself working alongside, was a rare occurrence indeed.

Yet, when he did take to aforementioned imaginings, he saw... something.

A small, faint, fleeting something as he attempted to remember what he knew very well he could definitely not remember. But these shimmering slivers of what were either nightmares (which he very much doubted he could have, considering his lack of and outright inability to sleep) or memories, were foreboding enough to hamper Rudolph's desire to know who he had been beyond what they were previously. These stabbing, glaring somethings were enough to keep Kurt from gripping at them and the dirt tinged, adrenalin ensconced (blood doused, wait, no, was that... they weren't...?) nature they always managed to present; enough to keep him from meditating on them when he did so for just about everything else that had found it's way into his unlife.

Although to say he saw this something (or, rather, these somethings) in his mind's eye every time he thought about his intangible past would have been almost if not wholly inaccurate. Rather than a regular and vivid image, they were only occasional in their disruption of his thoughts, and, as one might have expected with it's irregularity, these somethings were fleeting. But, even given that they were fleeting, these somethings were more than enough to perturb the otherwise stoic zombie. And these somethings continued to be perturbing, if not upsetting or even disturbing, regardless of how many times they presented themselves and regardless of how intent he became in maintaining a straight face in their presence.

That said, when Hanna had asked his undead partner what he'd concluded from his musings during a particularly lazy winter morning (it was amazing how much snow could fall in just two nights; amazing more still how things, bodies, even, could get so impossibly and irrecoverably lost under that finite blanket of white), it wasn't incredibly surprising that Casimir had responded with a simple "nothing worth thinking about". And that answer was suffice enough to appease the bouncing redhead (who had immediately launched into a discussion on what kind of hot coco they should buy when the snow let up, and if it was rude to bum some off of Conrad "since, yanno, he can't like _have _it anymore").

But, as much as the simple statement might have appeased Hanna, Wapaheo found it in no way sufficient to mollify his own, repressed (though increasingly pressing) disquietude.


	2. Skeletons On Parade

"Lets go out to the mountains for Halloween!" Hanna had insisted. "It'll be awesome!" he had quipped. "What could possibly go wrong?" he had asked.

Now, honestly, 'what could possibly go wrong' should have been Conrad's first indication that the trip was going to be a mistake of phenomenal proportions. Actually, now that he thought about it (now that he _really _thought about it), his first indication that the trip was going to be a failure should have been when it registered that the person who was inviting him was _Hanna_.

_Hanna_ for Christ's sake.

Granted it wasn't _just _Hanna, the redhead had roped Toni, Veser, Worth, and his partner along for the ride, too; anywhere there was Hanna, trouble was damn near _bound _to follow. If there was anything (and that does mean _any_ little, tiny _thing)_ that Conrad had learned over the few months since his death, it was _that_.

But, somehow, and despite the fact that the vampire didn't consider himself a complete and total _dunce_, he hadn't learned that single, definite lesson _well enough. _Or, so least, that's what the evidence spelled out clearly enough for the hindsight it invoked was practically _screeching _at the graphic designer from the back of his head. Or maybe the screaming was the concussion he was no doubt getting. And, normally, the vampire would have complained about that concussion, but Conrad doubted very much that the facts that his head was _killing _him and that he was berating himself for chancing a trip with the boy that had gotten him _killed_ would change much if he whined about them. He also found himself doubting that the severity of either pain would lessen regardless if they had been invoked by a swift meeting of skull and brick or derived of _completely _sane and reasonable evaluations that resulted from questions like 'how the _hell _did I wind up in _this _mess?'.

But, even if any of the aforementioned qualifiers _would _have lessened or change the pain or shrieking he was experiencing, he felt mildly comfortable assuming that they would not have changed that that he was standing in the middle of a bed and breakfast, which itself the middle of some discreet, _isolated_, backwoods town. And he felt more comfortable (maybe even _secure_) still in the assumption that any qualifiers, regardless of what they pertained to, would _not change the fact _that he was clutching a slightly dented water-pipe and looking around nervously for a threat that _should not _have existed. For _danger _that came in the form of _fucking skeletons _that, for one reason or another, had been attacking he and his friends (wait, was he _comfortable _calling them _friends_? when had he made _that _leap...?) since the sun had set. And, as much as the vampire would have liked to quantify the amount of time he and the ragtag group of paranormal oddities he had been banded together with (in order, of course, that he might more accurately complain about the situation he found himself in), he found himself unable to do so; smashing bones into dusty heaps took a_ long_ time, long enough to make hours seem to tick by in just a few seconds, and for seconds to drag on over the span of eons. If that made any sense. Which, honestly, Conrad was starting to doubt; he decided to blame the concussion he almost-definitely had.

The vampire also noticed that the skeletons looked like they were trying to talk, occasionally, but neither he, nor any of his friends (that word is still _weird_) found themselves really able to care (or maybe the others just didn't notice...). The animated heaps (that Conrad asserted, as he brought his kind-of-really-stolen pipe down over a particularly stubborn skull, looked like they were strung up with _trick wire _or _something_) couldn't talk without tongues, much less without _vocal chords_, so attempting to decipher whatever it was that they were saying was not only mind-bogglingly stupid, but almost entirely impossible, to boot. What the skeletons lacked in articulation, however, they made up for in violence. Not only in violence but in sheer numbers as well, to be concise. Numbers that were, no matter how the graphic designer tried to twist the already botched figured and statistics he was managing to gather, not in the _least bit_ dwindling. Worse still than the fact that the numbers of the _animated goddamn skeletons _(impossible impossible impossible _impossible! _(what, you mean my saying "_IT CAN'T BE SO_" didn't actually make it _less so! _I'm _shocked!_)) there was no hint of the steady streams of the somehow _impossibly _animated bones ending, despite the fact that the group began to take on injures.

As soon as someone would cut a through a corpse and smash the skull into something resembling powder, no less than two more (one point five was discovered to be the exact average upon later investigation, though how half of a skeleton could show up was utterly _beyond _Veser (Conrad's attempts to explain were just met with middle fingers and insults to his mother)) would make their way into the bed and breakfast, and in their place even more.

It was to be expected that, after what must have been half of the night, almost everyone had sustained _some _form of injury: Toni had gotten her leg stabbed something awful by a torso that hadn't been properly dismantled before the next wave had burst into the building; Worth had slivers of wood in all shapes and sizes digging into his hands from the tables and the chairs he had been swinging (and effectively dismembering) over the course of the entire night; Hanna looked as though he was about to pass out, and there was scantly a patch of skin on his arms that wasn't covered, at least to some degree, in sharpie; Conrad himself had gotten his head banged against a wall before Worth had yanked the skeleton off of him and promptly beat "the ever loving _shit _outta' it", and although he was more alive than he would have been otherwise, the vampire was still fairly sure that the concussion that was blooming in the back of his skull almost made his reletive _not _worth it; and, finally, Mr. Zombie had lost his right arm (although he seemed to be using his dismemberment, at least to some degree, to his advantage: alternating swinging Hanna's crowbar and beating off the advancing corpses with the severed green appendage).

Conrad was beginning to lose any hope of living to see the sun (metaphorically speaking) ever again, when someone had suggested that the group fall back to their rooms (just one, actually: someone else had pointed out that when the murder-fodder split up in horror movies was _exactly _when everyone _died_). It had been Veser, of all people (the only one of them that had managed _not _to sustain grievous injury), that had suggested the retreat ("Strategical-saving-our-asses is the better word, dude. Retreat makes us look like pussies.") and although Conrad wouldn't learn or remember to ask exactly what prompted the teenager had suggested retreat for some time, he did at the time have the question of _why _present itself to him (in actuality, the pans the half-selkie had retrieved from the kitchen at the start of the night, and had subsequently been fending the fleshless hordes off with had been snatched away from him and bent beyond all repair, respectively).Although, rather than muse on such a question, Conrad found himself abruptly snapped back into reality by the sound and sight of his living comrades fleeing (makeshift weapons still poised). He found himself farther brought back to by the feeling of being yanked forward as Worth grabbed his sleeve (which the vampire was honestly too tired and too confused to even really protest (all the _concussion! entirely!_)),and dragged him up the stairs when it became apparent that "he was takin' to fuckin' _long_" and that he was "gonna wind up as worm food nn'a couple'a _seconds _here if he din' get his _head outta _the_fuckin' clouds _and _run_".

They all wound huddled on top of a bed in the first unlocked room they could find (Veser's: which was, thankfully, on the second floor and near a very conveniently placed ladder should they have needed to flee out of an exit less conventional than a door at any point in the near future) for a few hours before the sun had risen, and the sound of townspeople going about their businesses could be heard outside. In that time, Hanna had managed to get most of the slivers out of Worth's hand (and Conrad had tried _very _hard not to think about the _look _on the hack's face as the wood got yanked out of the beds of his palms by clumsy, nail bitten, sharpie streaked hands; he could almost _hear _the scruffy, _stringy_ man saying "it hurts so good", and that was _not _something he wasted to _think _about with the migraine that was still _screaming _at him (and that now had the _fantastic_ backing of a combination of a _concussion_ and the _sun_)). Worth had managed (once his hand was free of most all of the wood in his hands) to create a makeshift tourniquet for Toni (who, although healing at a bizarrely fast rate, was still bleeding (a fact that Conrad tried to talk circle into making sense, but found himself utterly _unable _to)), out of duct tape, a few of Conrad's old shirts (Hanna had offered to use his, but Worth had declined and insisted on using the vampire, not only out of apparent antagonism, but also because he knew that the redhead really did _not _have any clothes to spare (, of course, for the reason that Conrad and Veser had gotten shoved into the same room)), and the pipe the vampire had been fighting with, while Hanna sewed his partner's arm on with a familiarity that was both intriguing and the slightest bit concerning.

Even with everyone having been focused on their own wounds or their own shifts at looking out of the single window the room boasted (save, for obvious reasons, Conrad (vampire ash was _not _something they all wanted to deal with), the silence still found itself to be awkward, and not busy. Which meant that everyone (save maybe for Worth and the zombie) began to feel the silence seep into their skin and hit their bones. Which in turn meant that everyone began to feel awkward. And that the feeling of being awkward did indeed produce more feelings of being awkward, creating something of a vicious cycle that amplified itself until there was not a sound to be heard in the room (besides the breathing of most of its inhabitants).

For all the silence, though, Conrad swore he could, occasionally, hear some kind of insane cackling echoing off the walls and off the mountains. Cackling that was, to his initial surprise, not Worth's. Or Veser's. Or Mr. Zombie's (could he... could he even _laugh?_). Or Toni's. Or even _Hanna's. _Cackling that disturbed him on some deep, primal level. Cackling that seemed to settle itself into the back of his skull between his migraine and his concussion set up home there, and then have a goddamn _house party_. Cackling that, though sporadic and almost _not there_, was always followed by an eerie, almost soothing (but in the _worst _fathomable way _possible_) voice.

The owners of the inn never came to check on their guests, and their guests didn't leave the room until Conrad was able to step into the fading light of evening without sustaining third degree burns. It was at this point that everyone dashed to their respective rooms together, in a body that resembled a small, panicked, _exhausted_ mob. They took only what they knew they could carry while still running (meaning that some things were, unfortunately for the paranormal investigator and his zombie partner (and to Conrad's great dismay) left behind), and then ran as fast as they _possibly _could (granted that Toni still had something of a limp, even though her wounds were mostly healed and the tourniquet had been removed at least a half an hour beforehand (Conrad wondered when he next got the chance how everyone had managed _not _to be at least a _little _perturbed by how fast the werewolf healed) to the single car they had all crammed into in order to make it to this simple, isolated, backwoods mountain town.

Whereas on the trip to the bed and breakfast that everyone was now fleeing from had been noisy and frustrating (but, in it's own, _insane _way, fun) the trip _from _the building was silent and worried, as well as followed by the awkwardness that had first been spawned in the silence of the room in which they had all spent a good majority of the night and all of the day cowering in.

On the trip to the city, in stark contrast to the trip from it, there was no fussing over who would sit where, which would have been pleasant under any other fathomable context, but was decidedly... _not_. Rather, the drive was completely silent... Save for when Hanna piped up with: "So... next year I'm thinking we go to an island and..."

The redhead had attempted to sound cheery and hopeful, but, really, he didn't seem to mind much when he was met with a swift chorus of exhausted but still vehement: "no"s.

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><p><em>This chapter got completely rewriten. So, it's basically the first one written without any time constraint. It's also the first story I've put up to not have been checked over for editing by anyone besides myself (please god tell me there aren't any grievous errors I read this thing like three times).<br>So, there's that. _

_ConWorth? What? No. None of that here. Nope. Not at all. Not subtly. What are you talking about. Oh look, a butterfly. I'll go chase that. Yeah. Thanks. Mhmm._

_The next chapter should be up in two weeks or so. I need to write the thing.  
>Up Next: <strong>Goodbye Bear<strong>_

_To the person who requested **Love Me Dead, **it's in the works!  
>Also: thank you to the person who reviewed, and also to the person who PM'd me! They both really brightened up my day, and gave me an extra kick towards editing this thing and getting it put up.<em>  
><em>That said, if you have a Ludo song that you'd like to see written to, feel free to mention it along with a review, through a PM, or even over an E-Mail. The same goes for if you see anything you'd like to see be turned into a multi-chapter fic; I'm not saying that the later will happen, but the odds are a lot better if I know someones interested.<em>

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_Until next time- **Pan**_


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